A Modern-day Pagan Place

Witches In Jeans Gather In Spirit Of Rituals, Revival

HOLLYWOOD, Fla.- They don't look like witches. No gnarled hands. No snarling faces.

Nothing about the six pagans standing in a circle beneath a mango tree fits the stereotype of cauldron-stirring crones and wand-waving warlocks.

These witches wear jeans. They smile a lot. They praise all of creation. They don't believe in Satan. They are a graphic artist, a minister, a pregnant housewife, a bureaucrat, a sportswear salesman, an entrepreneur.

They are outside the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship church this night, as daylight fades and the full moon emerges, to welcome with ritual yet another cycle of the magnificent Moon Goddess, mistress of magic.

Similar covens of contemporary pagans are meeting in back yards and living rooms across America to share the ancient Earth-centered spirituality practiced in pre-Christian times. About 2,000 of the estimated 50,000 pagans in the United States are members of the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans.

Founded in 1986, the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans is one of a few church-approved groups of witches and pagans. Unitarians choose their own beliefs and ethics. Driven by the feminist interest in goddess religions and a renewed urgency about environmental concerns, the covenant appeals to Unitarians of a pantheistic bent.

"It is abundantly clear to us that paganism has a very important role to play in the contemporary search for spiritual meaning. . . ," says Deborah Weiner of the Unitarian Universalist headquarters in Boston. "It allows us to return to nature and to some sources of original meaning for explanations of why things happen and why the world is the way it is."

Cloaked in misconception and fear, neo-paganism borrows from the native and tribal religions of the world and from many of the agricultural-based "old religions" practiced in much of western and northern Europe before and during the first few centuries of Christianity.

Early Christianity was an urban phenomenon, for the most part, and early Christians used the word "pagan," derived from the Latin word meaning "country dweller," to refer to those not yet converted.

Over time, "pagan" became associated with infidels and Satan worshipers. But that's a bum rap, according to Don Wildgrube, 54, a sportswear salesman and a witch for the past 24 years.

"Satan is a Christian concept," Wildgrube says. "It was a slander the church used to justify the Inquisition when witches were burned at the stake."

To him, Danielle Calver, Robin Pfohl and the others worshiping in a circle under the mango tree in Hollywood, paganism is a spiritual salve that works where others fail.

"It is so different, so much more beautiful than other religions," says Calver, 29, a former Roman Catholic and a P.I.T. (pagan-in-training). "It's all about nature and togetherness and a sense of belonging to everything that's around you. I like that."

"I got real tired of being the purveyor of original sin and relating to a male, vengeful God. Paganism is about individual responsibility. And that empowers me," says Pfohl, a pagan priestess who met her husband, Skip, at a class on witchcraft and healing at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.

She and the others on this early summer evening are invoking the powers of the "East Gate," the "guardians of the air," to bring enlightenment, and the powers of the "North Gate," the "guardians of the Earth," to provide "the foundation and sustenance for all of life's creatures."

Each participant bends forward to the middle of the circle, to the tree stump that serves as an altar. They light a small tea candle, make a silent wish for the coming month, and join hands and pray aloud to the Moon Goddess:

"Cast down your silver circle of light to keep me safe on this holy night, and in the coming month of days, that ever I may walk in thy ways. Let me not forget the mystery; Moon Goddess, you are here within me."

The signs and symbols

Only if you look closely do you see the signs and symbols of paganism and witchcraft-the five-pointed pentagram worn by Rel Davis, minister of a Unitarian Universalist church; the sliver of silver snake that encircles Pfohl's finger, her "eternity" ring.

Davis, 56, a former Southern Baptist minister, says he has been a "solitary," or a witch, for about 15 years. "Every witch is a pagan, but not every pagan is a witch," he explains.

Witches engage in wicca, from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning to bend or turn consciousness. Wicca focuses on a female deity-the goddess or the lady-who often, but not always, has a male consort.

But many pagans do not engage in any of the rituals, chants or drummings associated with "the craft" of Wicca. For them, paganism's main attraction is its lack of creed and dogma, its simple pantheistic nature.

"Witches I have known overall are fairly gentle folk. The kind of people who live with a bevy of animals around them and turn their living rooms into greenhouses," says J. Gordon Melton, editor of the two-volume Encyclopedia of American Religion.